10. San Quentin State Prison

CDCR.ca.gov

California, U.S.

San Quentin is California’s best-known prison, and is responsible for producing some of the most infamous prison stories in the country’s history. It contains the state’s only death row and it has a gas chamber, which is now only used for lethal injections. The prison requires an immense staff of 1,548 to maintain a semblance of control, but despite that figure, they still can’t seem to provide decent health care. A 2005 report found that doctors constantly misdiagnose illnesses and operate in filthy conditions. The experts filing the report said: "We found a facility so old, antiquated, dirty, poorly staffed, poorly maintained, with inadequate medical space and equipment and overcrowded that it is our opinion that it is dangerous to house people there.”

The worst part: It doesn’t seem to matter how many guards there are, how strictly enforced the rules are or how much prison reform is done, violence in San Quentin will forever be an issue. In 1982, a riot erupted that required 24 shotgun blasts to subjugate the uprising that resulted in the serious injuries of 22 convicts and 4 correctional officers. In February 2006, 100 inmates were injured and two were killed in racially motivated attacks that resulted in a lockdown for 1,800 prisoners.